Re: suggestion to change default org-latex-pdf-process to latexmk

[Stefan Nobis]

Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

> One reason is that latexmk is not installed on some systems.

Just after starting to write that this is false nowadays I realized
you are right. :)

See: https://mg.readthedocs.io/latexmk.html

For macOS latexmk is distributed with the default TeX installation
MacTeX for quite some years (IIRC at least since 2012). And it is
working OOTB.

As far as I know the default TeX installation for Windows is MikTeX
(is this still true?), which also includes latexmk but lacks the Perl
part (therefore Perl needs to be installed manually). But there is
TeXLive for Windows and as far as I understand in this case Perl is
also installed and latexmk works OOTB.

A manual installation of TeXLive for Linux should also install latexmk
(and Perl should also be available on next to every Linux box). Only
some distributions bundle latexmk in a separate package - that should
be easy to install (but breaks PDF creation if forgotten).

Therefore: latexmk is available on all plattforms and in most cases it
is already installed with the TeX system or easily installable. But
not in all cases does it work OOTB and requires more work like
installing Perl on Windows.

In my opinion its worth to depend on this tool as it makes handling
LaTeX documents much easier. On the other hand it may raise the bar
for some users just to high. Hard to say.

An alternative may be to use latexmk only if citations are found (new
feature, new dependencies). Or a wrapper that checks whether latexmk
is available and works (e.g. trying to call "latexmk --version") and
falls back to the old routine of manually running the engine and
bibtex/biber if necessary.

-- 
Until the next mail...,
Stefan.